If you read that Blog again, you will see it does not say those actions regarding Superfetch, etc are for all SSD. I don't know what you are trying to accomplish here. The benchmark tests clearly show TRIM is enabled and working. If Windows 7 was not issuing the command for TRIM, you would not see your SSD brought back to specs. Stop worrying and enjoy your SSD. ;-)

My reading skills are quite reasonable. The article is saying that not all optimisations will happen if the ssd is not fast enough. Are you saying Intel’s drives are not fast enough and maybe that is why some of the optimisations were not implemented? What about defrag? That should be off whatever. It would seem that the f/w is (at best) not fully TRIM compliant with Win 7 because if it was those optimisations would be automatic and they are not.

So my question again. How do you know if trim is working automatically?

This is an except from that article, which by the way was written before final release of Windows 7: "Be(sic) default, Windows 7 will disable Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching on SSDs with good random read, random write and flush performance."

If you want to make a big fuss over that, go right ahead. I already told you how to know TRIM is working. I know TRIM is working because my SSD is up to specs. Before TRIM firmware update, my specs had detoriated after using Windows 7 for a few days.

Trim is enabled by default but can be turned off. You can use the "fsutil behavior query|set DisableDeleteNotify" command to query or set Trim. If fsutil reports that "DisableDeleteNotify" is 0, then Trim is enabled.

As Intel have already confirmed in this forum; all that the "fsutil behavior query|set DisableDeleteNotify" command does is tell you that Win 7 is sending out the TRIM command. It is on by default. It does not necessarily mean that anything is happening to those commands.

I am simply asking why the f/w update from Intel does not appear to make the G2 compliant with the Win 7 TRIM spec.

I’m not worried but I am curious. I’m not sure why you seem to have a problem with that. (That is a rhetorical question by the way)

You are going by what is written on a blog before the final Windows 7 release, and the quote I gave you may apply as the Intel drive is not all that fast with Writes.

If you want Superfetch disabled, then disable it yourself, same applies to prefetch and defrag. I do not know for certain that Superfetch is working. Just because it says automatic does not necessarily mean it is running. Do you see your hard drive light on computer front panel flickering? I don't. I know with Vista it was flickering even when doing nothing. So, I am not at all concerned about the things you are. I do know TRIM is working and for me that is all I need to know on that subject.

The MS Engineer clearly states in that blog “As far as Win7 RTM goes, trim is in its final form. Of course it could evolve in service packs, etc., as the market demands.”

Before that blog, this was stipulated by MS: “SSD can identify itself differently from HDD in ATA as defined by ATA8-ACS Identify Word 217:Nominal media rotation rate. Reporting non-rotating media will allow Windows 7 to set Defrag off as default; improving device endurance by reducing writes.”

The Intel G2 with the latest f/w is not able to do that.

Regarding hdd light activity: If you are running Vista or Win 7 your hard drive is always actively writing small files. If you don’t believe me get something like Hard Disk Sentinel to track what is being written and read from the disk.

So are we thinking that Intel's G2 SSD is not telling Windows 7 that it is a SSD rather than a HDD upon first install and this is why Windows 7 is not optimizing specifically for SSD? (i.e. disable defrag, etc.)

And in regards to TRIM support (which is different from the SSD OS optimizations above), I believe the drive needs TRIM support in the firmware (which we will have), the chipset driver must support TRIM (which currently the native Windows 7 driver supports...not Intel's driver) and finally the OS must support TRIM (which Windows 7 does).

So the bottom line right now is that we need two questions answered:

1. Is Intel's G2 SSD telling Windows 7 it is a SSD upon first install?

2. What is the best method to verify TRIM is ON and working correctly? (i.e. How-to verify TRIM in ON in SSD firmware, chipset driver & OS). Would be nice if there was a utility that could check the entire chain and verify that TRIM is ON or OFF.

It is possible to run the "fsutil behavior query|set DisableDeleteNotify" command to query or set Trim from Win 7. I don’t know how to check if the ssd is accepting the Trim command or how to make sure the controller is passing through the command.

What I do know is that as part of Win 7 SSD optimisations defrag should be automatically disabled. I had assumed that a TRIM enabled SSD would implement this feature but obviously that is not the case for the Intel drives.

This is an interesting read. Especially the bit about method 2 and the NCQ issue.

This is also interesting although it is now quite dated. Amongst other things it talks about Windows Logo certification for SSD’s. As far as I know the G2’s do not have a Win Logo cert, but maybe that fell by the wayside.

Windows 7 is passing the TRIM command to the Intel SSD Gen.2 as long as you have the Microsoft AHCI driver installed and BIOS set to AHCI and TRIM firmware installed. It really is that simple. You can verify it by running the AS SSD benchmark tool.

You could disable Superfetch and whatever else you don't want to see running. I think you guys are making much ado about nothing of signficant importance.

The first thing I did upon booting into Windows 7 was uncheck scheduled Defragmentation, and disable System Restore--I make my own backups.

As for G2 drives and their behavior in Win7. I bought new G2 (80GB) a day before new FW came out. I had no time to play with it when new FW came out (luckily), so when drives started to turn into bricks I decided not to update FW (although I planned to install 32bit version of Win 7). After some time and waiting and after the disappointing lack of information and communication from Intel, I decided not to upgrade and go ahead with the installation using original FW. Win 7 Pro installation went smoothly and one of the first things I have checked after the install was if SSD optimizations worked in Win 7 Pro (final release downloaded via MS Action Pack from MS web). To my surprise, defragmentation (which worried me the most) was in fact DISABLED for SSD (and enabled/scheduled for secondary disk, which is a regular HDD). So in my case Intel G2 drive (with original FW) announced itself correctly to Win 7 and optimizations were applied. I do not know however, if it would be so with the new FW.

I did two installations of Windows 7 x64, first with original firmware and second with new firmware. I am pretty sure the scheduled defrag was checked, but I am not concerned if it was checked. The ultimate factor for me is the SSD with new firmware is working with TRIM passing through. Now I have Home Edition and maybe there is some difference because you have Pro? Regardless, it is not a problem to uncheck the scheduled Defrag.

I understand and respect the fact that you don’t care but please understand that I do care. Is the implementation of TRIM fully compliment with Windows 7 or not? Why are Windows 7 optimisations not working automatically with these drives?

Maybe you did not bother to read those links in my earlier posts. My questions could be highly significantly to the problems being experienced with the G2 drives if the NTFS file structures are being messed about. Maybe that is not the case, but it is why I ask the question.

Either way I’m a little bit disappointed that AnandTech etc did not pick on the lack of automatic Win 7 optimisations in their reviews.

Unless you can answer please do not continue to post that you don’t care and assume that no one else should either. You seemed to think the bricked drive problem was everyone else’s problem just because your update worked OK. What do you say now that Intel has confirmed they can reproduce it? Again a rhetorical question.

Intel:

Is the implementation of TRIM fully compliment with Windows 7 or not? If yes:

Why are Windows 7 optimisations not working automatically with these drives?

Under what circumstances could you reproduced the bricked drive scenario?

Why are you not issuing a f/w update to allow users to revert to an older f/w version?

IEither way I’m a little bit disappointed that AnandTech etc did not pick on the lack of automatic Win 7 optimisations in their reviews.

I am too, but maybe they didn't experienced any problems at all and the optimization might have worked in their case (as they did in mine). What disappoints me more is that they do not cover the story as it develops - they surely are site for geeks and early adopters, so I think this IS a story worth commenting. And as a side effect it might even push Intel to at least some meaningful response